Orange GOP committee woman beats Republican Party of Florida in court. Miami's DLP next?

WFTV:

An Oviedo woman had to sue her own political party to take the position she'd been elected to by 17,000 voters.

Sixty-eight percent of the vote in her favor seemed like enough to give Kathryn Townsend the victory last fall, when she ran to represent Seminole County in the state Republican Party, or so she thought.

"About 10 days after the election, I got a letter from the state party saying, 'You won, but you didn't fulfill this little requirement that we have over here, so you're not going to be seated,'" said Townsend.

So she sued her own party...

"Jokingly, I said, 'Over 17,000 votes, over $10,000, five months and a court order, you, in fact, can be the Seminole County Republican state  committeewoman,'" said Townsend.

The case sounds similar to Renier Diaz de la Portilla's case in Miami-Dade County.

But there's a big difference: DLP has documentation showing he signed and filed the oath, but the party said he doesn't qualify because he didn't file it the right way. The case is still in court

More here

Down Reagan! Gov. Scott banished dog after it bit mansion staff

Reagan, the now famous dog that once belonged to Gov. Rick Scott, was banished from the Governor's Mansion after biting an employee who moved his water bowl.

"The governor and first lady love dogs and they had to make a hard decision when it was clear that Reagan was very anxious around lots of different people,'' Scott spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said.

The dog bite occurred while the governor was in Orlando on Jan 7, 2011, just three days after Scott took office, according to an incident report released by Scott's office late last week. Mansion grounds employee Jennifer Kinsey was arranging flowers in the mansion when Reagan bit her on the right hand, according to an incident report made by her supervisor for the Department of Management Services. The report noted that the injury was not serious and required no medical treatment.

The story is coming out almost two weeks after the Times first started asking about Reagan's whereabouts.

-- Lucy Morgan

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After 2010 campaign, Gov. Rick Scott gave back dog named 'Reagan'

Reagan is now Pluto, 10 News reports (UPDATE)

Inauguration poet's mother has become something of a celebrity among Miami neighbors

At first, Geysa Blanco thought her son was kidding.

"He said, ‘Mom, I have news for you,’ " Blanco said, recalling the telephone call from her son a few weeks ago.

"Between English and Spanish, he told me that they had chosen him to write and read a poem at the presidential inauguration,” she said.

But Richard Blanco, a child of exiles who was raised in Miami and graduated from Florida International University, was serious.

The Barack Obama inaugural committee chose the 44-year-old Cuban-American civil engineer and author to recite an original poem at Monday’s inauguration.

Richard Blanco has also been speechless. “It took me 10 minutes to remember what the word for inauguration is in Spanish," he said in a telephone interview Sunday from Washington, D.C., less than 24 hours before taking center stage.

Blanco, who now lives in Maine, will become the first Hispanic inaugural poet and the first openly gay one. He is also only the fifth and youngest poet in the exclusive club of poets.

The first was Robert Frost, who in 1961 wrote a poem for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.

More from Brenda Medina here.